NymVPN incident report: 01 May 2026

In the morning (UTC) of 1 May 2026, users began experiencing connectivity issues on the Anonymous mode* of NymVPN. Apps across platforms were unable to connect via the mixnet. This was caused by network configuration errors as a result of a recent core change.

Thanks to community member notifications in the Telegram Support channel, the Nym team was able to quickly identify and patch the problem, releasing new apps over the weekend.

🕒 Timeline of events

• 5/1, morning: Users begin reporting connection issues on iOS
• 5/1, afternoon: Team investigated source in recent iOS release
• 5/1, evening: Users began reporting similar issue on Windows and other platforms
• 5/2, morning: Source of problem uncovered in VPN core build
• 5/3, afternoon: NymVPN core patched. New Linux, Android, and iOS apps released. Resolution needed further specification for Windows
• 5/4: Windows patched and app released

Total resolution time: 3 days

🔍 Root cause

A code change in a prior release removed the default network configuration for the Anonymous mode tunnel. As a result, the tunnel started up without a proper network address assigned to it.

Without that address, the connection monitor – which checks whether the tunnel is healthy – couldn't do its job and kept tearing the connection down, even though nothing else was wrong.

The Fast mode was unaffected because it uses a different protocol (WireGuard), which sets its own network configuration explicitly and doesn't depend on the default.

🛠️Resolution

The root cause was fixed with a targeted one-line patch restoring the missing network configuration. This resolved the issue for all platforms.

A Windows-specific safeguard was added: if Windows takes a moment to fully bring up the tunnel interface on startup, the connection monitor now waits rather than immediately failing. This prevents a separate but related timing issue from causing false connection failures on Windows.